GwtAI - 0.1

Over the last weekend, I have finally made a first release of GwtAI. The project is still in an very early stage, but I got a couple of emails from people all over the world with questions and ideas. So I thought it is time to make something available for those who don't can or want to build GwtAI from SVN. The Applet integration and communication stuff is quite stable and already useful. The tray integration stuff does not yet work on all platforms. I have to read up and do some more tests with JDIC to get it to work on Linux and Mac.

Herbstcampus 2008

A couple of hours ago, I arrived in Nürnberg at the Herbstcampus Java conference. The conference is mixed with .Net guys so this promises to be interesting. I'll probably not gonna listen to a lot of .Net talks, still to get some impression from 'the other' (a almost said the 'dark') side may be enlightening. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to give my GWT talk again. Of course I had changed and improved it a bit. The talk is somewhat longer than the one from the Jazoon and I made a completely new demo application. I'll post the code and the presentation on my homepage later on...

GwtAI - GWT Applet Integration

In the past couple of days I have been working on a third party library to provide cross-browser no-hassle Java Applet integration for GWT. With the upcoming Java SE 6 Update 10 (a.ka. Update N) Sun provides a totally new browser plugin. With this move they want to bring the Java Applet and Web Start technology back. With the ability to drag an Applet outside of the browser and run it in a separate thread, Applets will become kind of equal to Web Start applications. The big advantage of an Applet that Applets are capable to talk back to the website that actually started them. So Applets may experience kind of comeback in the near future.

The GwtAI project is in an early stage, anyway have a look if you like.

Jazoon 2008 roundup

So the Jazoon 2008 is over and it was great fun. After my talk on the first conference day I relaxed and was enjoying the rest of the conference. In my book the presentations given by Joshua Bloch, Principal Engineer at Google, were the conference highlights. His presentation are not only informative but also entertaining. The opening sessions and keynotes are available as videos from Parleys, check them out yourself.

Most presentations, including mine, are already available for download from the Jazoon website.

Jazoon day 1 wrap-up

The first day at the Jazoon Conference is over. The Opening Sessions were really interesting. Martin Odersky started out with a talk on Scala which keeps to be the new thing to check out. Simon Phipps gave a really impressing talk on free software in the market, how to bring free software from niche to mainstream.

My own talk went quite well. I was less nervouse than I had expected, so it went like clockwork. Although I had quite a lot of slides I did not exceed the time limit. The slides will be available from the Jazoon homepage after the conference and I made the example sources avaliable from my private homepage.

A thrill of anticipation

I'm sitting in the Work Area at the Arena Flimcity where the Jazoon 2008 is going to take place. The Opening Session will start in about an hour. Web 2.0 technologies are quite a big topic here. Web developement, Ajax and all the frameworks around it get a lot of attention. There are three talks on GWT, one by myself :-)

Javapolis 2007 roundup

I'm back from the Javapolis 2007 conference. I had a great time over there in Antwerp. I have attended many interesting talks about Java, JSRs, GWT, Scala, methodology, testing and many more Java related topics. The Java Puzzlers by Neal Gafter and Joshua Bloch was the best (fun, interactive and informative) talk in my opinion. During and between the talks there were many discussions about different JSRs and the future of Java in general. To listen and talk to some of the greatest minds in the Java world was really enlightening. Another highlight was the Java Posse Live session, if you don't yet now the Javaposse podcast you have to check it out!

I have also met some people from the GWT community. Maarten Volders (Thanx for lunch!), Luc Claes and the two speaker of the Google Web Toolkit talk Didier Girard and Dick Wall.

I really hope I can be there in 2008!